Kunstler: Made For Each Other

Don’t be fooled by the idiotic exertions of the Red team and the Blue team. They’re just playing a game of “Capture the Flag” on the deck of the Titanic. The ship is the techno-industrial economy. It’s going down because it has taken on too much water (debt), and the bilge pump (the oil industry) is losing its mojo.

Neither faction understands what is happening, though they each have an elaborate delusional narrative to spin in the absence of any credible plan for adapting the life of our nation to the precipitating realities. The Blues and Reds are mirrors of each other’s illusions, and rage follows when illusions die, so watch out. Both factions are ready to blow up the country before they come to terms with what is coming down.

What’s coming down is the fruit of the gross mismanagement of our society since it became clear in the 1970s that we couldn’t keep living the way we do indefinitely — that is, in a 24/7 blue-light-special demolition derby. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with accounting fraud, but in the end it is an affront to reality, and reality has a way of dealing with punks like us. Reality has a magic trick of its own: it can make the mirage of false prosperity evaporate.

That’s exactly what’s going to happen and it will happen because finance is the least grounded, most abstract, of the many systems we depend on. It runs on the sheer faith that parties can trust each other to meet obligations. When that conceit crumbles, and banks can’t trust other banks, credit relations seize up, money vanishes, and stuff stops working. You can’t get any cash out of the ATM. The trucker with a load of avocados won’t make delivery to the supermarket because he knows he won’t be paid. The avocado grower will have to watch the rest of his crop rot. The supermarket shelves empty out. And you won’t have any guacamole.

There are too many fault lines in the mighty edifice of our accounting fraud for the global banking system to keep limping along, to keep pretending it can meet its obligations. These fault lines run through the bond markets, the stock markets, the banks themselves at all levels, the government offices that pretend to regulate spending, the offices that affect to report economic data, the offices that neglect to regulate criminal misconduct, the corporate boards and C-suites, the insurance companies, the pension funds, the guarantors of mortgages, car loans, and college loans, and the ratings agencies. The pervasive accounting fraud bleeds a criminal ethic into formerly legitimate enterprises like medicine and higher education, which become mere rackets, extracting maximum profits while skimping on delivery of the goods.

All this is going to overwhelm Trump soon, and he will flounder trying to deal with a gargantuan mess. It will surely derail his wish to make America great again — a la 1962, with factories humming, and highways yet to build, and adventures in outer space, and a comforting sense of superiority over all the sad old battered empires abroad. I maintain it could get so bad so fast that Trump will be removed by a cadre of generals and intelligence officers who can’t stand to watch someone acting like Captain Queeg in the pilot house.

That itself might be salutary, since only some kind of extreme shock is likely to roust the Blue and Red factions from their trenches of dumb narrative. If the Democratic Party had put one-fiftieth of the effort it squanders on transgender bathroom privileges into policy for mitigating our tragic misinvestments in suburban sprawl, we might have gotten a head-start toward a plausible future. Instead, the Democratic Party has turned into a brats-only nursery school, with the kiddies fighting over who gets to play with the Legos. The Republican Party is Norma Desmond’s house in Sunset Boulevard, starring Donald Trump as Max the Butler, working extra-hard to keep the illusions of yesteryear going.

All of this nonsense is a distraction from the task at hand: figuring out how to live in the post techno-industrial world. That world is not going to operate the ways we’re used to. It will crush our assumptions and expectations. Lying about everything won’t be an option. We won’t have the extra resources to cover up our dishonesty. Our money better be sound or it will be laughed at, and then you’ll starve or freeze to death. You’d better hope the rule of law endures and work on keeping it alive where you live. And nobody will get special brownie points for the glory of sexual confusion.

I look for the financial fireworks to start around March – April, as the irresolvable debt ceiling debate in congress grinds into a bitter stalemate, and it becomes obvious that there will be no voucher for the great infrastructure spending orgy that Trump’s MAGA is based on. Elections in France and the Netherlands have the potential to shake apart the European Union, and with that the footing of European banks. Pretty soon, everybody in all parties and factions will be asking: “Where did the glittering promises of Modernity go…?” As we slip-side into the first stages of a world made by hand.

Kunstler dude, last year in January 2016 you predicted the wheels will fall of in February 2016. Don’t you ever get tired of predicting wrong bi-weekly?

Apneaman on Mon, 13th Feb 2017 2:41 pm

“And nobody will get special brownie points for the glory of sexual confusion.”

Holy fuck, it sounds like Cheeto ain’t the only tired old white man pining for 1962 sensibilities.

Sorry old kunt, but the whole eddifice can fall down tomorrow, but it won’t instantly convert people’s mind sets back to 1962 on sexuality or race or whatever. Don’t work that way.

Kunt keeps including transgender people in with the other causes of collapse – finance racketeering, rotten politics, peak oil, debt etc – so I looked it up. Transgender people make up .06% of the US population.

Hey old kunt, if that few effeminates is what keeps you up at night, you are a sad old man indeed. Deal with it. Get over it.

Ya know, I think this world has had more than its fill of white boomer men fucking it up – seriously it’s a big fucking mess and most of it is on their watch, but they still telling everyone whats what. Isn’t it time y’all left? Leave the rest of us to collapse and go extinct without having to listen to anymore of your antiquated bullshit.

As far as I’m concerned, in a resource depleted world, culling the senior citizen should be priority #1. Useless eaters with huge resource usage and eco footprints. Time to go.

makati1 on Mon, 13th Feb 2017 5:39 pm

Ap, I agree. Humans come in all kinds of sizes, shapes, colors and sexuality. Always have. We are not just black or white, male or female, skinny or fat, tall or short, etc. We are every shade of brown and sex, size and intelligence. JHK needs to get out of the Victorian age and into the 21st century.

I disagree with your last sentence. You should be so lucky to get to old age. We are not animals. We are sentient beings. Most of us have contributed for many decades to the world you enjoy. If we manage to live a few years beyond our physical usefulness, we are lucky also and deserve that time. I agree that the obese of the land should be forced to slim down by removing their ability to consume, but who is to judge the amount? You? LMAO

Chic with a Dic on Mon, 13th Feb 2017 6:02 pm

Maybe post collapse America will be like Ancient Greece and Kunt can get used to the Trojan Warriors passing his enslaved ass around like a lose reefer.

Ap “As far as I’m concerned, in a resource depleted world, culling the senior citizen should be priority #1.” I would prefer to get rid of all the useless people, regardless of age. At one of the community gardens where I grow food there is a 93 years old man who helps more than I do; he is the only member of either garden that does so. I have room for him in my world. I agree that most old people are basically useless, but usefulness and not age should be the selecting criteria. Many old people have useful knowledge, too. Younger people are better educated, but their education is mostly useless. I think that as long as someone can produce as much as or more than they consume they should be allowed to stay.

makati1 on Mon, 13th Feb 2017 7:24 pm

Grow up Davy.

makati1 on Mon, 13th Feb 2017 7:28 pm

JuanP, I agree with your comment. Being able to contribute is more important than age or any other qualification. I help support our caretaker family and am paying for the daughter’s college education and will pay for the son’s in a few years. I help my family in the States as I can. I also will be spending my time in the garden on the farm, when we get there. at 72, I have a lot of practical experience and skills to share with my neighbors. Age is a number. Some are useless at 16.

Antius on Mon, 13th Feb 2017 7:29 pm

Kunstler, there is nothing glorious about a post-techno world when natural resources are depleted as far as they are. It means a slow spiral of living standards, with much of the human race starving to death as we slowly descend back into the stone age.

Is that the bed time story I should be telling my young children? That if they are lucky, they won’t be part of the 95% that starve and can spend the rest of their lives running through the woods chasing wild pigs? For gods sake man! Should I tell them to top themselves now, whilst there are still plenty of guns?

The future can be space age or stone age. There isn’t really an in between because we are facing a peak everything thermodynamic collapse if we stay here on Earth. The second is what happens if we don’t manage the first. But the first is infinitely better.

thanks to Trump I am optimistic for the first time in 10 years. If we can do away with the central banks, then we have a chance for another 50 years. A chance to overcome the energy challenges.

Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Mon, 13th Feb 2017 11:29 pm

What indication do you have that Trump will do away with the central banks?
How would doing away with central banks assist in overcoming peak oil and diminishing EROI?
Fuck are some people suckers.
More billionaires in cabinet than ever before and retards think they got a populist. Morons.

Cloggie on Tue, 14th Feb 2017 5:59 am

The author with the fascinating name “Kuntler” keeps hinting: I maintain it could get so bad so fast that Trump will be removed by a cadre of generals and intelligence officers who can’t stand to watch someone acting like Captain Queeg in the pilot house.

Keep your hopes high, James, that your tribe will someday take back control over America again. Not going to happen. European-America crossed the Rubicon and won’t be driven back in the PC Soros corral.

How would doing away with central banks assist in overcoming peak oil and diminishing EROI?

What is this persistent fascination with the peak oil fata morgana? America would be a better place if it consumed half or less energy it consumes now.

Croatia is a relatively happy country as I could verify for myself last summer. Nobody flies, not everybody has a car, nobody goes on international holidays. There is no hunger, everybody has plenty of time. Didn’t see any homeless persons.

The quality and beauty of the architecture of “poor Croatia” is higher than most cities in America. There are big advantages to living a local life, because it stimulates to shape your direct environment, rather than wasting a lot of energy and time on commuting to bureaucratic jobs in stupid cubicles.

Davy on Tue, 14th Feb 2017 6:12 am

What a crock of shit Makati. You SS stipend barely covers your cheap condo and cheap club med lifestyle. You are the biggest liar on this board and a braggart at that. Who needs to grow up? LOL. The world would be a better place without you that is for sure. You are insignificant as to not matter anyway just more fake news noise.

Davy on Tue, 14th Feb 2017 6:19 am

“The future can be space age or stone age.” Antius, the future is reality and that appears to be the stone related at least for most of us. It is natural for species to go into overshoot and suffer a die off. Why would humans be different? Maybe you need the bed time stories more than your kids. I admire your concern and you have a good heart but the reading you need to do is Kübler-Ross:

Clog, your per-capita is deceptive and typical of makatiland style agendas. Using gross figures for energy consumption is likewise deceptive when comparing Europe to the US. You do realize the US has a huge petrochemical industry that distort those figures some. We have a huge military protecting you. We produce a significant portion of world GDP so yea that is reflected in energy usage. It needs to come down but it is more complicated than school yard dick comparisons.

I have been to Croatia and I would rather live here thank you. Projecting your idealized European settings on me does not work. The US and Europe are continental sized places generalizations are intellectually lazy. I have been to some horrible European places you rarely speak about. The US uses too much energy and when that ends globalism will end and we will all be different. Your techno future is an allusion that sooths your anxiety of decline. You can’t stand the idea of going 3rd world and that is where you and I are going.

Cloggie on Tue, 14th Feb 2017 6:54 am

You do realize the US has a huge petrochemical industry that distort those figures some.

We didn’t ask for that colonialist “protection”. Protecting against who? After the end of the American empire we will be protecting ourselves again, like we always have.

We produce a significant portion of world GDP so yea that is reflected in energy usage. It needs to come down but it is more complicated than school yard dick comparisons.

I don’t see why that would be wrong with that. A big dick is a big dick.

I have been to Croatia and I would rather live here thank you.

Of course you would, you are an American, accustomed to an affluent American life style, not a Croat. My point was that after a prolonged and painful adaption process we all could live happily with much less, without all sorts of exaggerated notions of “collapse”, rampant on this site.

I have been to some horrible European places you rarely speak about.

Example in Western Europe? The Parisian Banlieux perhaps? I want to clean these places out too.

You can’t stand the idea of going 3rd world and that is where you and I are going.

I don’t share the idea that the degree of third-world-ism has anything to do with kwh/capita/year; it is demographic. But that’s too “racist” for your taste. Current Amsterdam is far richer than it was 100 years ago, but today it is far more “third world” than in 1900.

Cloggie “My point was that after a prolonged and painful adaption process we all could live happily with much less” I agree with that. I have no doubt that it applies to the people around me in Miami. I consume significantly less resources than most of the people around me but I lead a more productive life.

There are many people in the USA that don’t have cars, though, particularly among the young. I spent the afternoon yesterday training college students as team leaders for a volunteering event where they will be showing corporate execs how to repackage veggie seeds to send to Haiti. I was surprised to find out that none of them have a car. We had thought that they would be able to carpool to the event but we will obviously have to provide transportation for them. Twenty college students and no cars; things are already changing. When I attended the same college 27 years ago around half the students owned their own cars.

joe on Tue, 14th Feb 2017 9:10 am

When suburbia was originally formed (UK around 1900), most new builds came with lots of land for the growing of fruits and veg, in those days there was only trains and they mostly supplied flour and large bulk supplies due to the fact that there was little or no preservation of food, everything was in season only. We can save allot of energy by simply lowering our standards of living, eg banning SUVs, and eating staples only. Christians still pray for their daily bread, not their daily sushi. But lately Im asking whats the point. Humans are hell bent on self destruction, so why wait. I say lets get it all, and leave nothing behind for the jihadis to live on.

Theedrich on Tue, 14th Feb 2017 4:50 pm

“Snowdenism” now pervades U.S. intel. The disgraced former head of the Justice Department, acting Attorney General Sally Yates, fired for insubordination on Monday, 2017 Jan 30, is a perfect example. But the top underlings agreeing with her at Justice, and her fellow travellers in the intelligence agencies, are continuing to leak classified information to the press and the Demonic Party. Their pretext: they claim to have a “higher duty” to the Constitution. So that justifies trying to destabilize the new administration. But for a clear-eyed look at what Snowdenism is in fact doing to the country, the best current source is Edward Jay Epstein’s How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft. The identies of these leakers must be leaked, and the top ranks of all of these taxpayer-supported agencies must be purged ASAP — and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

According to Business Insider, “[t]he NSA tells CBS that it believes Snowden stole 1.7 million classified documents, leaked 200,000 to journalists he met in Hong Kong, and still has access to 1.5 million.” The Snowden-friendly leakers still inside intel agencies are becoming increasingly dangerous — being, in effect, an existential threat to the nation.

Among other things, the Leftist politics these moles support is continuing the subversion which led to U.S. defeat in Vietnam. The State Department prelates believe American (actually only their own) “values” must be imposed everywhere, and that anti-Western militants should be “brought to the negotiating table” where they will be treated “humanely,” etc. Above all, there must be no “Islamophobia,” and we must accept all “refugees” from the scumlands because America is “a land of immigrants,” blah, blah, blah. All this, while countless genosuicidal bureaucrats accept — even welcome — the massive corruption and criminality of enemies, gangs and primitives as “just their culture,” which must of course be considered equal to Western post-Christian culture.

Thus the anti-White factions, the Snowdenists, and the international oligarchs, with sympathizers in the U.S. judiciary, block all serious efforts at halting the spread of international cancers of any type. Given this, the wars in Afghanistan and in Mideast-N. Africa are already lost, and the West itself is doomed.

In short, there will be no serious attempt to stop the narcofication of the American populace, or to the parasitism by foreign populations moving into the West and rotting it out. Unless by some miracle Trump manages to cleanse the leprosy from our body politic.

Theeder, Trump is the last gasp of your cherished Aryan phylum. The white majority is becoming a minority as we text and the future elections will attest to this. The stew of the melting pot will not forget what happens if your choice of two severely corrupted candidates gives you a palsey making it impossible to participate. They will hold their noses and elect someone of their ilk. Flux is everywhere you look which means we are fluxed.

Theedrich on Wed, 15th Feb 2017 3:03 am

Sorry to let you know, Siss, but if the White race goes down, the planet goes down. There will be nothing left for your type to gloat over.

Cloggie on Wed, 15th Feb 2017 4:10 am

Sissy loves to sneer about a situation that could cause his own demise. And than claims that he is anti-immigration after all, but piously adds, for “environmental reasons only”.ROFL

Theeder, Trump is the last gasp of your cherished Aryan phylum. The white majority is becoming a minority as we text and the future elections will attest to this.

Sissy seems to assume that his cuntry is for ever, but all the signs are that the hole joint could fall apart in a heart beat. The USSR came down by a stroke of a pen, out of the blue in a matter of a few hours.

Sissy is called Sissy for a reason. He won’t lift a finger to protect anything. Like most here he is the total nihilist, who uses that dubious peak oil and CC narrative as an excuse and convenient pretext to have to do nothing, since “we are all going to die anyway”.

Almost every m2 is red. The Dems got their numbers from human warehouses aka big cities. Get rid of both coasts and its sweating cities and the SW desert and you’re good. Most of the Trumpeteers have guns. A political significant fact of the first order. The revolution could begin after Twitter bans Trump.lol

I am a naturalist, Cloggedheart and from my perspective the battle is lost. You can build your ark of renewables but in the end it will become a prison with you and the gangbangers fighting for supremacy. I have lifted more than a finger in the fight for habitat and wildlife but my energy reservoir like Ind Civs is nearing E. You are so thoroughly ensconced in human machinations that you have never truly been aware of the natural world that makes your narrow reality possible. So be it.

george on Wed, 15th Feb 2017 2:17 pm

based on all of the comments i can only conclude that this nation is coming apart by the seams . lots of angry people out there with too much time on their hands . learn a trade and be happy in your work.